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Full Idea
Dispositions constitute the essences of properties, and hence the identity of a property is not primitive ('quidditism'), but is given in terms of its dispositional relations to other properties.
Gist of Idea
Dispositions are what individuate properties, and they constitute their essence
Source
Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.3.1)
Book Ref
Friend/Kimpton-Nye: 'Dispositions and Powers' [CUP 2023], p.50
A Reaction
I like the picture that powers are basic, giving rise to dispositions, which combine to produce qualitative and active properties. Powers are precise and relatively few, and properties are ill-defined and very numerous. Being 'influential', for example.
Related Idea
Idea 23708 Humeans see properties as having no more essential features and relations than their distinctness [Friend/Kimpton-Nye, by PG]
| 23698 | Dispositions have directed behaviour which occurs if triggered [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23699 | 'Masked' dispositions fail to react because something intervenes [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23700 | A disposition is 'altered' when the stimulus reverses the disposition [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23701 | A disposition is 'mimicked' if a different cause produces that effect from that stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23702 | A 'trick' can look like a stimulus for a disposition which will happen without it [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23703 | Some dispositions manifest themselves without a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23704 | We could analyse dispositions as 'possibilities', with no mention of a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23707 | Powers are properties which necessitate dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23706 | Hume's Dictum says no connections are necessary - so mass and spacetime warping could separate [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23708 | Humeans see properties as having no more essential features and relations than their distinctness [Friend/Kimpton-Nye, by PG] |
| 23709 | Dispositions are what individuate properties, and they constitute their essence [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23710 | Dispositionalism says modality is in the powers of this world, not outsourced to possible worlds [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23711 | A power is a property which consists entirely of dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23712 | Powers are qualitative properties which fully ground dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| 23714 | Dispositional essentialism (unlike the grounding view) says only fundamental properties are powers [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |